Join us on Tuesday, March 28 for the NAEP Welcome and Planning Session. Co-presenters will be Tim Profeta and Tom Earnhardt, two of North Carolina's most recognizable environmental experts.

Tim Profeta

Tim Profeta is the director of Duke University's Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions. Since 2005, the Nicholas Institute has grown into a major nonpartisan player in key environmental debates, serving both the public and private sectors with sound understanding of complex environmental issues.

Profeta's areas of expertise include climate change and energy policy, the Clean Air Act, and adaptive use of current environmental laws to address evolving environmental challenges. His work at the Nicholas Institute has included numerous legislative and executive branch proposals to mitigate climate change, including providing Congressional testimony several times on his work at Duke University, developing multiple legislative proposals for cost containment and economic efficiency in greenhouse gas mitigation programs, and facilitating climate and energy policy design processes for several U.S. states.

Prior to his arrival at Duke, Profeta served as counsel for the environment to Sen. Joseph Lieberman. As Lieberman's counsel, he was a principal architect of the Lieberman-McCain Climate Stewardship Act of 2003. He also represented Lieberman in legislative negotiations pertaining to environmental and energy issues, as well as coordinating the senator's energy and environmental portfolio during his runs for national office. Profeta has continued to build on his Washington experience to engage in the most pertinent debates surrounding climate change and energy.

Profeta earned a JD, magna cum laude, and MEM in resource ecology from Duke in 1997 and a BA in political science from Yale University in 1992.

Tom Earnhardt

Tom Earnhardt is a graduate of Davidson College and UNC School of Law. Working with Attorney General Robert Morgan, Tom was one of the first attorneys to work for North Carolina in the "new" area of environmental law in 1971. In Governor James Holshouser's administration he worked to protect the New River and to purchase much of the land that is now part of Cape Lookout National Seashore. Earnhardt also worked in the corporate arena and in private practice. In addition,Tom had over 20 years in the classroom and retired as a full professor. At North Carolina Central University School of Law he taught Property, Business Associations and Environmental Law.

In Earnhardt’s “other life” he has been, and continues to be, an avid naturalist and advocate for the natural and cultural resources of North Carolina. Tom is a keen observer and photographer of wild things and places. His conservation-related travel and speaking engagements have taken him across North America, the British Isles, Europe, and Asia--including Russia and China. In North Carolina, Tom has been a keynote speaker at many environmental, regulatory, civic, state park, and science organizations over the years. Over the past 14 years Tom has crisscrossed North Carolina researching, writing and co-producing over 80 episodes of the natural science television series, Exploring North Carolina. Earnhardt also completed a natural history of North Carolina for the University of North Carolina Press titled Crossroads of the Natural World.

Tom has served on the boards of major preservation and conservation organizations including among others: The Nature Conservancy (state), Trout Unlimited (national), North Carolina Wildlife Federation (state), He was recently appointed to the Executive Committee of the North Carolina Literary and Historical Society. Earnhardt has received numerous awards for his work with cultural and natural resources, including the Governor’s Award as “North Carolina Conservationist of the Year” in 1994. In 2004 he received Audubon's prestigious “Honorary Warden Award” for protection and preservation of bird habitats and sanctuaries. For Earnhardt's work with the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and for championing natural resources, he received the “Order of the Longleaf Pine” in 2011.

The UNC-TV (Public Television) television series, Exploring North Carolina (ENC), which highlights natural resources of North Carolina and the Southeast, has been nominated for Emmy Awards five times. It has consistently been one of the highest-rated programs on UNC TV as it celebrates North Carolina's rich cultural and natural history from the Outer Banks to the Tennessee border This year Tom Earnhardt and his production company, Explore North Carolina, LLC, produced a one-hour tribute to North Carolina State Park System that aired multiple times state-wide over UNC TV.

Edward (Ted) Boling is the Associate Director for National Environmental Policy Act at the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), a position he assumed in January of 2016 after upon his return to CEQ after five years at the Department of the Interior. Ted served as Deputy Solicitor for Parks & Wildlife at the U.S. Department of the Interior, where he supervised the work of the Solicitor's Office in support of programs of the National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Ted joined the Department in August of 2010, as Counselor to the Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management where he focused on land management planning and renewable energy development, and was Deputy Solicitor for Land Resources from April of 2011 to July of 2013. Before Interior, Ted served ten years at CEQ as Deputy General Counsel beginning in August of 2000, General Counsel beginning in January of 2008, and Senior Counsel from September of 2009.

Ted went to CEQ from the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he was a senior trial attorney. Ted joined the Department of Justice in 1990 through the Attorney General's Honor Program. At the Department of Justice he was a trial attorney in three Sections of the Division: Law and Policy, Wildlife and Marine Resources, and Natural Resources. He also served as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney in the criminal prosecution program of the Eastern District of Virginia. His trial and appellate litigation experience concentrated on cases involving NEPA, Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, and Federal land management statutes. Ted also worked for a year at the Department of the Interior as Counselor to the Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks.

Ted is a member of the bar of the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth, Ninth and Tenth Circuits, and the Virginia State Bar. He has served on the Board of the Virginia State Bar Association's Environmental Law Section, which he chaired in 2000-01.